


Healing

by bigsunglasses



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Loyalty, Post-Canon, Riding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 10:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5001190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigsunglasses/pseuds/bigsunglasses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kiru's skills are needed when the Emperor has a horseriding accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Healing

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to song-of-staying for betaing.

The horse was a wedding-gift from the Great Avar, and despite a schedule considerably more crowded than usual in anticipation of his nuptials, Edrehasivar VII had found time to try his new mount.

"He looks so small," said Telimezh, shading his eyes against the spring sunshine. "Or is the horse very big?"

"Both, perhaps," Kiru offered cheerfully. They stood just inside the paddock's gate, and she was struggling not to follow her instincts and tip her face up as offering to the first really golden light of the year. A nohecharo looked to her emperor at all times. 

At the moment he did indeed look rather small atop a calm black specimen of a Barizheise warhorse. There was no time for anything more than riding the creature around the paddock a few times - the Corazhas awaited, for a meeting to dispatch of all urgent business before the wedding tomorrow - but Kiru was of the opinion that even a half hour in the sunshine would be beneficial to her charge. Even his goblin darkness had sallowed in the long trough of winter.

"But he is quite tall! How can he look small?"

Kiru grinned. Spring had a way of making her happy even in the worst years of her life, and this year was one of the best. "Lieutenant Telimezh," she said, "one person may contain multitudes!"

"We were asking a serious question, maza," he said, dropping into formality and crossing his arms. What a dear boy. So touchy. But so good: after his first surprise at her appointment, he had declared to all his teasing Guard friends that he'd work with a thousand true women over a single traitor any day.

"And I gave thee an answer both serious and silly. Wilt understand it one day."

This won her a grumpy snort, and some suppressed giggles from the clutch of grooms and guards within earshot but outside the paddock.

Edrehasivar turned the nearest corner on his steed, trotting carefully, gems winking with movement and light. Why did his edocharei insist on such adornments for riding? All it meant was increased appointments for cleaning and care with the Court jewellers. He waved at his nohecharei as he passed. And could not the imperial white have been temporarily changed, too? 

She waved back at him. Telimezh didn't, but given another few years she thought he would.

Edrehasivar approached the next corner. 

The horse reared. 

It threw him.

And it bolted away.

Telimezh reached the supine figure a second before her, his sword out and slashing at something on the ground nearby. Kiru dropped to her knees. The world was slow and soupy. His white clothes were dusty. _Csaivo, please -_

Chest: rising and falling fast. Eyes: shut. Dirt clung like a scab across his chin.

Sickness rose in her throat.

At the first touch of her hand on his brow his eyes flew wide.

“We are fine!” he said, struggling into an upright position. “What - ?”

“A snake!” said Telimezh breathlessly, now trampling whatever his sword had destroyed. “Serenity, are you hurt?”

A drumming of footsteps warned Kiru that a herd of onlookers were arriving. “Do not move further until we have felt your head and neck, Serenity,” she ordered. “Remember that we are not only your nohecharo, but a cleric of Csaivo. Telimezh, do not let those people crowd the emperor. Tell a groom to catch that horse before it runs someone over. And send a message for the coach.”

Her fingers found no lumps, no wounds, no obvious fractures, but his pulse raced like a river in spate beneath his skin. “Do you feel pain in any part?”

“No,” he said, shying away as she tried to feel his jawbone. “Oh, perhaps some bruises - ! But we must return to the Alcethmeret now. Before the rumours of our death reach it.” 

He gave too much thought to others, too little to himself. “Serenity, an injury can in the moment be disguised by shock. Let us feel your limbs and chest. Give us a moment to cast an enchantment to sense the condition of your organs - “

“Once we are returned! Let us stand – Telimezh, will you help us?”

The lieutenant was there in a heartbeat, grabbing Edrehasivar's right arm and hauling.

“Telimezh, sheathe thy sword,” said Kiru curtly, rising also. Her fear was souring into confusion. “There are many people here, and no more snakes.”

They began a progress towards the gate. Telimezh hovered like a first-time parent: Kiru walked a little behind, watching Edrehasivar's movements narrowly.

The head groom, skin beaded with the sweat of horror, approached, bowing over and over. “Serenity! We scour the paddocks for spring snakes every morning, but this day we failed you.”

“Dachensol, you did not fail - “

The emperor moved a trifle stiffly, she thought, but that was not unexpected after a fall. He made his way slowly but steadily through the crowd of anxious watchers, earnestly absolving Dachensol Rosharis as he went. No twist to his back. His arms in working order as he smoothed his hair. No blood anywhere, though the edocharei were going to weep over the ruinous scrapes on the leather riding jacket.

In the coach some short minutes later, Kiru tried again. “Serenity, is there an area where the shock of impact has no yet faded? That could indicate an injury.”

“We have experienced worse falls,” he said shortly. “You may examine us properly once we reach the Alcethmeret, if you wish.”

Kiru sank back against her seat. She knew a little of what palace rumour said of his relegation, and she had seen the scribble of scarring on his arm. As cleric of Csaivo she had learned to be wise to the wounds of the soul as well as the body, and she did not wish to distress the emperor further. He was perhaps reliving some unpleasant memory. 

And yet she was sure he was obscuring something.

“We should have seen the snake before!” said Telimezh, in a sudden burst of anguish. 

“Do not blame yourself, please.”

“We have failed you again, Serenity!”

Kiru almost broke in to correct Telimezh's misapprehension, but common-sense prevailed. This was not something in which she played a part.

“You have not failed us,” said the emperor gently. “Now, or then. You are our nohecharis, Lieutenant Telimezh, and we will _always_ be glad of it.”

There was silence after that.

Rumour had not reached the Alcethmeret ahead of them. Even though Telimezh and Kiru tried to surround their charge as much as possible, they were only two bodies, and every passing servant and courtier turned to stare at the sight of the dishevelled Edrehasivar VII. 

“Send for my edocharei. We want a bath,” said the emperor the moment they entered the Alcethmeret, and the household staff went into a bustle, and he went upstairs. 

“Telimezh,” said Kiru, having formulated a plan, and the lieutenant paused on the steps behind Edrehasivar.

“We will see him to his room. Go tell the First Nohecharei of what has occurred. Also Mer Aisava. Have word sent to the stables requesting information as to the horse's state. And clean your sword.”

Having thusly dispatched a possible witness, Kiru stalked her charge up to his bedroom and shut the door neatly in her wake. “We have around two minutes before the bathtub and the edocharei arrive,” she said pleasantly. “You will either permit us to examine you, naked, or you will tell us what troubles you and we will summon a doctor. Serenity. Your choice.”

He dropped into a chair, limp as a doll abandoned by a child. “If it becomes known,” he said, “there will be a diplomatic incident. We were riding our _grandfather's gift_ \- “

“Where?” Kiru asked, finding that her voice shook with something that might be fear, and might be fury.

A long pause, and then: “Our wrist,” he said, and stuck out his right arm.

She went to him, the habits of twenty years keeping her steady, and gently felt the joint. His jerking wince told her almost more than what she felt.

“We are … ” he began, voice small, then paused. “ _I_ am sorry, Kiru Athmaza, for my earlier curtness. Such a thing could not become known in public. _Must_ not.”

“A clean break,” she said, carefully lowering his arm into his lap. “Six to eight weeks to heal. Serenity, we appreciate that political necessity must govern much of your life. But had it been a more serious injury we hope you would have cared more for yourself than for a diplomatic incident!”

“Six to eight weeks? I am getting married tomorrow!”

A sudden smile could not be driven from her face. “Our joint skills as maza and cleric of Csaivo are at your disposal. At the cost of a very unpleasant night, it can be healed by then with an enchantment,” she offered.

“I would not have thee suffer, Kiru - “

“An unpleasant night for _you_ , we am sorry to say.” She sat beside him. Idiotic stoicism or not, just then he might have been any one of the patients she had treated the course of her life. “Bodies do not take kindly to disruption of their rhythms.”

There was clattering outside, approaching footsteps. The emperor looked urgent. “How am I to disguise this from my edocharei until then? For it must be done, fond of them though I am, I know they gossip - ”

Against her best judgement, Kiru managed to cast a maz of no sensation on his wrist just before the distressed edocharei burst upon the scene.

All three other nohecharei, besides Csevet Aisava and an anxious Prince Idra, turned up during the course of the emperor's bath. The boy was chased firmly away after a few calming words. Mer Aisava stated that he had already sent a reassuring message to Dach'osmin Ceredin, sent refreshments to the waiting Corazhas, and received word from the stables that the horse had not been startled by a spring-snake as supposed, but bitten by a red-snake. “Which we only know from the horse's fetlock, Serenity, Lieutenant Telimezh having so thoroughly … dealt with … the snake itself.”

Kiru observed her partner go rather red, and swallowed a laugh.

“Will the horse survive?” asked the emperor anxiously, then sputtered as a spongeful of water was wrung out over his hair by Avris.

“Yes, Serenity. Since you took no harm, we will draft a letter to the Great Avar referencing the event in a humorous light – we think that would be best.”

Cala Athmaza was the only person silent in that room, staring alternately between Edrehasivar's wrist and Kiru's face. At least he was intelligent enough not to say anything.

But that night, when he came to change shifts with Kiru, she said, “Thou may'st stay, but I do not go quite yet,” and he said, “I have guessed why.”

The emperor had been tucked up in bed rather later than planned; his household had been planning to give him a good night's rest before his wedding, but the accident and the late Corazhas meeting had thrown everything off. He looked – small, Kiru thought, ruefully: but was that just because the bed was big?

“It is a simple maz,” she told him, sitting on the edge of the bed. “But you will feel the effects all the way until morning.”

“I understand.” He gripped his lip tightly in his teeth as she took his wrist.

“None of that: you need your mouth whole for tomorrow, to kiss your bride.”

In the room's corner Cala choked a bit, and her charge went bright red and obeyed her.

She stripped off the maz to suppress pain first, and saw a terrible judder cross his face. But after she had cast the healing maz his face looked even worse. “Oh. Oh, we see what thou meant. Canst not thou make me sleep through this?” He looked so miserable, so childish, not even twenty.

“Of course – see, we have this syrup ready for you – but it will be a feverish, broken sleep.”

“Didst get that from Doctor Ushenar - ?”

“Of course not. This is from our own private stock, for when we treat people in our hours off-duty.” 

He opened his mouth, obedient to her gesture, as she spooned in a dose.

“I am sorry,” he mumbled, a few moments later, face already softening in drowsiness.

“Why, Serenity?”

“I saw hurt in thy face.”

She put away the little bottle of syrup in her robe's pocket, constructing her reply, trying to find the truth to tell him. “A little hurt. A little anger – we prefer the indulgence of hypochondria in our patients, compared to the damages of stoicism. But mostly fear.” She kept her voice low so Cala would not hear, suddenly feeling like a youth again, uncertain of herself.

“Fear?” His eyelids fluttered.

She swallowed, slipping into informality. “I have never been happier than I am as thy nohecharo. I would not lose this, not for anything.”

His eyes shut. She did not think he heard her clearly anymore.

“And fear for thee, too. Even if I was not bound to thee in oath, wouldst have my loyalty.”

A warm sheen crossed his face. He would be feverish this night, and the long rituals tomorrow would be even more tiring and tedious than might be expected. She sighed, and rose.

“I have studied the healing enchantments,” whispered Cala, “but never have I seen them applied so subtly.”

“Time and experience.” She touched his arm lightly. “He may wake and be thirsty in the dawn.”

“I will be ready with water.”

She took one glance back as she put her hand on the doorhandle, then paused. A few quick strides took her back to the bed, and she tucked a loose fold of sheet gently around his shoulders. _Csaivo, bless him._

Then, soft-footed, she left the room and its occupants to the mercies of dreams and magic.

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the prompt "broken bones" on my H/C bingo card (hc_bingo.livejournal.com).


End file.
